Sunday, 5 January 2014

Well it's judging time I'm afraid, but before that give yourselves a big cheer for the final tally of 102 CRAP GAMES!

Damnations joke (c) RebelstarWAC :-)

In judging something so subjective as this I've let the chuntey guide me almost entirely. If I could say before announcing the winners/losers I'd like to say a huge thanks to everyone who entered and joined in the banter on the way, it's been great fun.

Saturday, 4 January 2014

This marks Paul’s second
entry to the competition and it’s another introspective one.Done in the 1990’s the game is based on a
bonus stage from Super Mario on the GameBoy and named after his then best friend at school,
Daniel.Through Paul, Daniel met and is
now married to one of Paul’s exes, and they are now committed Christians.Paul said he didn’t have time to weave this
tangled web into the game, but I would suggest that given the themes explored
here – luck, fate, life, death, purpose, longevity, in a way he already has.

Ready or not, on loading
you leap straight into the game (no
introscreen or wait for keypress here) and have to work out what to
do.You randomly appear on one of the 4
platforms at a disarmingly fast rate and must press a key to ‘get’ the object
on that platform.Objects are green
crosses (lose a life), clocks (extra time) and yellow boxes (extra life).There is no scoring to speak of, unless you
count the number of goes as such. The speed of change is too fast to properly target anything, so it is
at best guided, at worst random which item you get.So like life, Daniel is a game of chance.

I tried to play through to
the magic number, 256 goes, but annoyingly lost all my lives at the last few
tries after plain sailing for ages.Then
it was game over and reincarnation straight back on the trampoline…Thankyou Paul!Download here.

Friday, 3 January 2014

By Jason RailtonGenre: Arcade: Swoop ‘n’
SnoopJason points out that the
idea for this game was conceived decades ago “when a children's nature programme on BBC TV asked viewers to send in
wildlife-themed computer games”, but only now has he realised this vision.

We can breathe a sigh of
relief in that unlike Jason’s other entries, Agatha Christie’s Parrot doesn’t
attempt to be a technical marvel.The
first ‘flaw’, as Jason points out, is that it doesn’t actually even feature a
Parrot – it is in fact a Scarlet Macaw (Ara
Macao)!As a keen birder of course I
recognised this instantly as I keep several in my study at any one time.

These instructions were
provided:

****

In
this you take on the role of the famous crime-solving bird, flying

high
and swooping down to collect important clues to solving a great

murder-mystery.Press any key to dive, and try to collect
more clues

than
you miss in order to solve the mystery.

****

It’s actually quite fun!As you press the any key, the bird follows a nice
character spaced swoop (perhaps Agatha
Christie’s Peregrine would be more appropriate?) down onto a passing clue
and upon acquisition you are one step closer to solving the mystery.The bird animation is great, as are the UDGs,
representing typical clues you might see in a murder mystery, like the dagger,
the cocktail, the bomb, the train (?) and the err teddy bear.Barmy, funny, simple and a
bit crappy.Ticks all the boxes for me.Ah
mon ami, ze little grey beak ‘az eet all.Merci
beaucoup Jason!Download here.

By ArdaGenre: Ore-full MazeIt gives me great pleasure
to announce that Arda, host of the 2012 CSSCGC and author of Drawlander, has
been biding his time and entered a sizzling little maze game.

Done completely in BASIC,
it brings to mind the joys of ScrapYard Scrapes, and I’m pleased to say I’ve
enjoyed Real Miner just as much.The aim
of the game is to get to the green exit and get as much ore as you can en
route.You can move through bright red
material and, Charles Atlas style, push the rocks that are larger than
you.To move through diamond and rubble
you must use your pick axe, which appears to be made from substandard material
as each one is capable of doing only one hit!Mercifully, like any real mine it is scattered with equally unserviceable
pickaxes in sealed pockets throughout.

Real Miner offers a nod to
some modern gaming styles with its ‘Career Mode’, in which you play a preset
game and follow a real life emulation of what it’s like to be a miner (and what an uncanny representation it
is!).Alongside this, more fun can
be had with the random game and coded game, the screens in real miner are
generated cleverly using procedural generation.

What’s crap about it?For some the UDGs, it returns to BASIC for
the random and coded game (see HACKSACK), the career mode may be impossible (though I’m not sure – more play needed) and
random generation of impossible screens.I love it to bits though, and it would sit nicely on the Cassette 50.You might be wondering why
it’s called real miner.Well during play
you may be sent into a mine with no pickaxes or in impossible traps and it
becomes clear just how hazardous the life of a miner can be.Arda’s game is clearly a call to arms for
better working conditions in the mining industry.Thankyou Arda!Download here.HACK SACK:

Murk Alfa (a Star Wars reference?) is Jason Railton’s
third entry to this year’s competition and this one is a jaw dropper.It features wireframe graphics and brings
great games and demos like ‘Escape from Targ’ and ‘Hunter’ to mind, and they
were on the more powerful Amiga.

EDIT > It's been pointed out that it is in fact 'Mercenary: Escape from Targ' and there was a perfectly good Spectrum port available. Not sure about 'Hunter', and short of doing a quick web search for it there is literally nothing I can do.

Jason provided the
following info:************************

MISSON BRIEFING

Due to an impending
meteoric catastrophe, an entire but obscure

planetary system has been
entirely evacuated.Your task is to

infiltrate the capital
trading district of one of the wealthiest

planet's major cities and
steal the largest diamond in the history of

the universe for your shady
employer.You arrive and leave via the

city's Spaceport.Due to automated security systems still in
place, you

must procure all the
materials to complete your quest from within the

city itself.

CONTROLS

O and P - turn left / right

Q and A - step forward /
back

W and S - sprint forward /
back

SPACE or M - Fire / Select

To enter a building, walk
under it, stand on its lift pad and press

FIRE, then B or 1-9 for the
floor, 0 to exit.

When you have a suitable
ticket, stand at a bus stop and press FIRE to

summon the bus.

When you have obtained a
city map, press M to view it.

Press I to view an
inventory of collected items.

With a suitable transport
device, press E and D to move faster, but only

along roads.

With a suitable flight
device, hold FIRE to gain altitude.

************************So far so good, in fact you
might be wondering why this game isn’t in the best game 2013 competition instead.Well, as good as Murk Alfa is there are a few tiny drawbacks, firstly the speed is buttock clenchingly slow (which
is understandable because there is a lot going on), secondly the upper screen
clears as it is redrawn, so you get a blinking effect when moving, third I can’t
seem to solve any of the puzzles or make lifts work and fourth it returns to
BASIC quite a lot.With this in mind I
began to suspect that Murk Alfa is not quite
the finished article, however Jason gave his assurance that this is “a fully complete technical marvel, and has
in no way given up because MCoder III runs out of memory trying to compile it.”Ah.

Nevertheless, Murk Alfa is
a tantalising glimpse of a (potentially) amazing game, so whack your emulator right
up and watch your Spectrum throw some astonishing wireframe shapes.And erm if you can solve any of the puzzles
let me know…Thankyou Jason!Download here.

By Lee SpoonsGenre: Utility: It’s so
true!As a brave new year
approaches, Lee has submitted (hopefully
at the thin end of a bottle given the time) this rather compact bit of code
to the competition.

AANYS is a work of genius
because it is ahistorical*.Whether
past, present or 100 years hence, people can count down to a new year in which
everything will be better, and it might be.HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!*apart from the computer bit but, y’know.Thankyou Lee!Download here.

This utility was inspired
by the unfortunate weather induced power cuts over the festive period.We were unaffected in our locality, and were
jealous of those without power, who were set free from the restraints of the grid
– just imagine the things you could do: play scrabble by candlelight, eat raw
meat, write a poem, contemplate a wall and so on.

So to use this tool simply
load into your real Spectrum, which unlike your PC can run on the chuntey alone
in the absence of proper juice.Simply
follow the questions and after the rather nice interlude music, it will decide
and tell you if you have a power cut and how to act accordingly.